Dr Hannah Little

Hannah Little is a lecturer in Science
Communication at UWE Bristol. She teaches at foundation,
undergraduate and postgraduate levels, specifically focussing on
online engagement and digital projects. She teaches lectures on
podcasts, online video, citizen science and other online content.
She also teaches on science and comedy, and sometimes even does
some stand-up herself!

Before going into academia, Hannah worked in Science
Communication professionally. She worked full time co-ordinating
the STEM Ambassador programme and the Nuffield
Research Placements in the North East of England. Since then, she
has taken part in many public engagement events: she has worked in
the press office for the British Science Festival, she was a
scientist in “I’m a scientist, get me out of here!”, and once
appeared on Cbeebies’ “Mr. Bloom’s Nursery Roadshow, Ready, Set,
Grow!” running a disco that was powered by bicycles!

Research, Practice and Projects

At the level of research, Hannah's main
interest is in cultural evolution and science communication. During
her PhD, she used experimental methods to investigate
how cultural transmission affects the emergence of structure in
language. She plans to use similar methods from the field of
cultural evolution to look at how scientific information is
transmitted online, in the lab, and in the real world. She is
interested in what affects the quantity and quality of information
transmission, and what information survives and spreads.

Hannah also has a special interest in the
challenges of communicating issues relating to computer science,
particularly methods to engage children and other populations in
how to code. She is interested in addressing questions relating to
gender equality in education and communication around computer
science. Previously, she has done some coding workshops with
“Greenlight for Girls” (an organisation in Belgium), and in 2012
participated in the European Gender Summit ran by the European
Science Foundation.

She is also interested in promoting public
engagement with digital rights and communicating about the problems
that occur when policy to protect civil liberties does not keep up
with the growth of technology.

Publication, Dissemination and Impact

Hannah has published in journals including
Cognition, Behavior Research Methods, Interaction Studies and the
Journal of Language Evolution. She has edited a special issue for
the Journal of Language Evolution on the emergence of sound
systems. She has presented work at international conferences
including the Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society
and International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

She is on the Scientific Committee for the
EvoLang conferences and the board of the International Association
for Cognitive Semiotics. She writes frequently for Babel, a
magazine aimed at non-specialist readers with an interest in
linguistic and language-related issues.